Friday by Numbers and SPEED RACER

1. 5th: Iteration of "the Fast and the Furious" franchise I watched.

2. 12: Time I woke up (post meridian). Also the cost (in dollars) for my movie ticket.

3. 4 1/2: How long it took me to donate blood (in minutes).

4. 85+: SPF (Sun Protection Factor) sunblock I used.

5. 2.50: Cost (in dollars) of Saba sushi (Mackerel, six pieces).

6. 10: Number of tacos I received from Taco Bell when I ordered a 12 taco party pack.

If there was a theme for this past week, it would be speed. Obviously, watching Fast Five was a pretty swift (and furious if I may add) way to end my week. Most notably, however, I donated blood in a record time today which shocked the nurse who was "sticking me" (her words, not mine). She scolded me for it, saying something about how donating blood too quickly could be unsafe. What does a registered nurse know about donating blood? MY BLOOD DOES NOT PLAY GAMES, LADY. In any case, I forgave her because she let me take some Cheez-Its home along with some blood donation stickers and an ugly "blood bash" t-shirt.

A couple of kids I tutor were also smitten with the speed demon this past week. They were attempting to blaze through their math homework with no regard for the careful logic math requires. Problem after problem, I had to explain to each of them that it was their obsession with speed, not their lack of knowledge, that was causing them to make repeated errors. It was a pretty frustrating week for tutoring.

That said, I value those struggling students more than my gifted ones (to some extent) because I was am certainly one of those people who haphazardly attempts to finish tasks with little attention for quality. My dad's criticized me on multiple occasions about how I try to do everything as fast as I can without any logical motive or destination. Gosh, I still remember all the times I'd try to eat my pizza faster than the rest of my family just for competition's sake (Papa Murphy was probably shaking his head in disapproval). It was fun I suppose, but it probably wasn't worth all the coughing fits I had from the pizza crusts I stuffed down my throat.

Dealing with reflections of my past self is difficult and sometimes aggravating, but I'm pleased that it forces me to consider whether I've actually progressed at all since I was trying to sprint past my math problems and beat my family at nonexistent pizza-eating contests. Perhaps four and a half minutes is a blood-donating record I shouldn't break.

Have a nice day,
-Matthew

No Leo, No Juno

Though I forget the vast majority of my dreams, the strange anxiousness that lingers after sleeping indicates that I have really weird ones. Sometimes, they're so bizarre that I manage to remember them so I can forever be tormented by their strangeness. Today while napping in my incredibly uncomfortable car, I had one of those dreams. Here's a few of the things that happened while I was sleeping:

-Tokyo-chan, the band I played with for a Japanese benefit concert, was having a photoshoot with the self timer of a point-and-shoot camera (even in my dreams we're a ghetto band...). For some reason, I was doing some weird dance pose for the camera and my head was disproportionally big. I was very self-conscious of my head and wanted to un-tag myself from the facebook album that was going to be made.

-A mystery man (in the dream, I literally saw a question mark wherever he was) was somehow hypnotically suggesting things to me and a group of people. When I told a friend that I was being hypnotized, he claimed that he had been manipulating me since the day we met. This was VERY inception-esque.

-Probably the most memorable part of this dream was watching some scenes from a video game I've been playing (which pretty much tells me I've been playing too much). Anyway, the story in my dream (which completely differs from that of the actual game) was about how the main character just received a cushy job in the army and when he was going to an office to accept the position, he found himself having to save the girl he loved from some unexplained peril. After the incident, she somehow disappeared and the hero rushed to the office only to find that the job he was pursuing was taken by another applicant while he was off do-gooding. A pretty sad story isn't it?

-Ryoko, a woman who hangs around the music department, randomly went in my car and expected me to give her a ride. When I told her that I wasn't driving anywhere, she started singing. [Actually, this is not weird at all. This situation is completely believable]

These may seem like pretty normal situations, but realize this all happened in the same dream. Somehow when I was dreaming, all these things connected with each other; the part about how I was being hypnotized was somehow related to my band's photoshoot and the stuff Ryoko was singing to me. I'm not going to go about psychoanalyzing my weird crackpot dreams, but man... Carl Jung would have loved this.

Have a nice day,
-Matthew

Almost Empty

Three years ago during a tough time, I bought a pack of cigarettes. They were cheap menthols that seasoned smokers scoff at and newbies choke on, but when the consciousness of my mind was bleak and the air around me was heavy, each one gave me about five minutes of smokey, self-detrimental solace. Truly, they were a guilty pleasure proscribed to only the darkest, gloomiest days in my life. Today, I have two leftover.

Clearly, the fact that I still have some leftovers despite such a long ownership indicates that I am a VERY occasional smoker. If anyone reads this and is worried in the slightest bit, please realize this is a pack/3+ years "habit" and I highly doubt it will ever result in anything remotely resembling those terrifying smoking PSA's.

Anyway, this pack, though seldomly excavated from the CVS bag it came from, has seen a lot of things in my life. Three years ago when I first purchased them, I smoked a couple after I was rejected by a girl I liked. Last year, I had one or two after a demoralizing conversation with my mom. I smoked on several different occasions when certain friends did not hold their promises as well as I had hoped and, most recently, I had two when I came to the realization that I was chasing after the wrong girl (see last post [LAUGH OUT LOUD]). The rest I infrequently used whenever I faced torturous bouts of loneliness.

I'm not going to say cigarettes are great or that they're even good. When I have to taste of my extremely stale cigarettes I usually wince and cough for a bit before I take a second drag. I will say, however, that they dull down the pain a little and, in my experience, help you swallow the bitter, nasty truth of your situation one breath at a time. I don't like getting stuck in my depression. An occasional disgusting cigarette helps me cope a little with the uncomfortable steps I have to take to climb out of my sadness. I'll do my best to keep my last two for as long as possible. FOUR MORE YEARS! FOUR MORE YEARS!

Have a nice day,
-Matthew